What do you do with your ribbon cable?
Printable View
What do you do with your ribbon cable?
I nip the ends off the connectors, remove them from the ribbon cable, then pull the gold pins out of the connector with needle nose pliers. Low yield gold plated pins $80 per pound all day long.
Chop the ends off as close as possible. Sell those as gold connectors by shipping them to a buyer with other escrap. Around $2.10 a pound. Sell ribbon cable at local yard for computer wire price.
If processed all the way down they yield no 3 insulated wire and gold pins, i wouldnt sell those as connectors, you need to pull the pins out of the connectors or your losing money big time. My breakdown analysis showed a 300% profit selling them as pins rather than as whole connectors.
Gold Recovery: Scrapping Ribbon Wire For Gold - YouTube
Have you tried putting the cable ends into a rock/parts cleaner/polisher to see if they would rattle loose. It would be awesome to be able to throw 1lb at a time in there turn it on for a few minutes and rattle them out...The bolt on one of those things sheared in the middle of the night while I was running it and ended up with a huge mess of rock polisher all over my house....
Finally starting to see what JGH is talking about with pulling pins. NOW THIS IS MAXIMIZING YOUR PROFITS!
SCRAP GOLD PLATED PINS 1LB VINTAGE HIGH END YIELD FOR GOLD RECOVERY | eBay
exactly, the base price of gold pins is $50 - $100 for standard pins , it goes sky high after that for gold filled and mil-spec pinsQuote:
Originally Posted by CTscrapman
I think I remember seeing where you posted some numbers, but cant find it. I'm thinking of giving it a shot. Did you sell directly to a buyer or ebay? Are fees included in your breakdown (ebay fee, shipping, etc.)? Thanks for the video and information!Quote:
Originally Posted by jghilino
Would also be interested in the numbers such as how many lbs of IDE connectors to get one lb of pins
Me too, CE. I'm guessing appx. ten (just from guessing the pins to be appx 1/10 (or 10%) the weight in an IDE connectorQuote:
Originally Posted by CarolinaEwaste
Yesterday I took apart 3 cables with 3 connecters each and had 9 grams of pins. So about 10 cables for 1 oz.Quote:
Originally Posted by CarolinaEwaste
My breakdown showed about 6 lbs. of ribbon cable ends = 1 lb. gold pins. I contacted several buyers here on the forum and the highest quote I got was $20 for these pins(some much less). Ebay seems very hit or miss on the pins from what I've seen. Jghilino has a big opportunity to become a buyer for these, with the prices he is getting and the niche market he has found. Something you should consider Jghilino, as I'm not seeing the prices you are getting as realistic for most based on my own pursuit for a gold pin buyer.
most escrap buyers buy gold plated pins but prices vary wildly so dont get offended by these numbers if you offer less =), $50 per pound for lowgrade to $1,000+ for high end milspec pins.
ribbon connector breakdown for 1 connector, using my jewelers scale, it is so accurate that just the airflow across it will make the numbers change:
connector as is after the ribbon wire has been completely separated properly from the connector: (0.183 ounces / 16) x $2 (connector grade) = 2.28 cents
gold plated pins only: (0.030 ounces / 16) x $50 (gold pin grade)= 9.30 cents
By processing this 1 connector i increased the value of my scrap by 407%, i made it into a much lighter higher yield item that is now profitable to ship and is more desirable to a refiner.
So 533 ribbon cable connectors produce 1 pound of gold plated pins. Definitely not worth breaking down unless you have absolutely nothing else to do. The trick would be to find a way to get the pins out quickly. Ball mill has been suggested but the abrasive action will reduce the quality/yield of the pins.
Pm me please if your having trouble moving these at a fair price. You are spot on with your estimate of 6 pounds connectors to yield 1 pound of pins. So basically you are turning $12 into $50 or whatever you get for the pins. I dont sell my pins to any of the buyers on here though. Again as ive said before not all scrap buyers advertise on this forum and im not going to give out my buyers info. I was able to convince my main buyer to join this forum but there alot of refiners/buyers that will not participate in a online forum environment. If they dont want there info to get out or to participate that choice is theres to make and i must respect that if i want too continue to do business with them. The one i was able to get to come here has not given me any referral credit, so there is not any incentive to get them to come here other than to pay the bills to keep this forum running.Quote:
Originally Posted by MOscrapper
I do see pins with alot of non plated metal on them going for $50 plus.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/1LB-1-POUND-...p2047675.l2557
Whoever purchased these is out of their mind if they purchased only for scrap recovery. Anyone who wants to pay that please PM me and I'll keep you stocked for as long as you'd like.Quote:
Originally Posted by CTscrapman
A rule of thumb is 1% of Gold (Au) recovered for every gram of high end pins - pins that are gold plated to Mil-Spec requirements (50u plating thickness [u = micro-inches]). In addition to mil-spec these high end pins are in numerous commercial applications designed for high temperature and heavy corrosion environments. As I'm sure you know anything "older" basically pre-1990 will generally have a thicker plating than current commercial applications.
Note: This is not an end all be all, simply the formula many pin "buyers" use when calculating. Recovery rates can vary based on pin size (mass, surface area, etc; deterioration, and a handful of other things).
Pins/toz Max Buying Price Recovery/g Recovery/toz Au Recovery
14.5833 $168.00 4.536 0.146 $250.29
21.8750 $251.00 6.804 0.219 $375.44
29.1667 $336.00 9.072 0.292 $500.58
The most i have sold a pound of pins for is $300 and it was not mil-spec.
Seems majority of people cut off the connectors from the cable, but still appears to be mixed response about pulling pins or not. For those that do not pull pins, what are you selling the ends for and to who? Buyer here, ebay, scrap yard? What kind of pricing are you getting? My local guy is buying all my internal computer wiring for $0.80 lb with or without connectors. I'm not sure I have the time to cut ends and pull pins, so how do you think I would best maximize my profit (without pulling pins)? AJ earlier said he is getting $2+ pound...anyone else find that to be the case?
Shendog, I cut the connectors off all cables that have gold pins, I do not pull pins because I don't have time. I sell them to a buyer here on the forum, look through the buyers in the buyer/seller section. I get 2.15#, I cut them off with a pair of sissors and can do a plastic tote of ribbon cable in about an hour or less.
its not worth it to pull the pins on ribbon cables depending on the method you use it could take a full day to get 1 pound, i like floppy drive connectors the best for gold pin yield. I have no problem paying $4 pound for floppy drive connectors that have been removed from the boards properly and dont have much pcb showing around them.
Not all of the pins from the connectors are fully plated.
The ones that just the tips are plated you can just trim off the tips with wire cutters. It really depends what grade you are shooting for though. If your selling them to a base rate buyer that says xx dollars per pound there is no incentive to trim and cut off just the plated areas. You are implying that just the gold plated areas of the pins be cut off or what is your policy barren? You buy pins by the grade?Quote:
Originally Posted by BarrenRealms007
I cut 'n keep, when gold goes to 15k oz everyone will want my sexy pins.
Just did a test run of 10# of assorted ribbon wire with various amounts of connectors attached (with a piece or two of ferrite that we found later). At $.80 per pound, that is $8.00 as is at my local yard.
Spent about 50 min cutting off the connectors and came up with 4.3# @ $2# = $8.60 plus remaining wire of 5.7# @ $.80 = $4.56 totalling $13.16.
50 min of labor for $5.16 minus the cost of shipping to buyer. I dont add in the cost of taking wire to yard as I go there often and wire is very small percentage of my total load.
Hope this information helps anyone trying to decide what route to take.
Probably netting around $3 hour to cut connectors.
I had a little over 90 pounds of ribbon cable from the last batch of computers I did. My yard offered .45 a pound for it as dirty comm wire. Took my trusty free scissors (free from harbor freight) and cut the ends off. Took 4 hours and ended up with 61 pounds of clean comm wire at 1.10 a pound and 32 pounds of gold ends. I figure I made 90 bucks for 4 hours of work and got to listen to Micheal Savage for a couple of evenings to boot.
Ill take $22.50 an hour anyday.Quote:
Originally Posted by freonjoe
The item that was for sale does not look like pins from ide or floppy cables.
So. seems as tho its two different types of pins we're talking about, I trully don't think its worth pulling pins out of ide or floppy cable, I think its worth snipping the cable off the connector and tossing them into the connector buckets.
but to pull them is like pulling hair out of My bald spot on top.. of my head..
Quote:
Originally Posted by jghilino
Another option is making a gold pin ingot. Looks like many go for around a $1 a gram on ebay. Over $400 a lb just add heat.
funny how that works, though. You take the most expensive part off of the wire and then they pay you more for the wire.Quote:
Originally Posted by freonjoe
Sometimes the ribbon has silver wire. If the wires are internal and the electronics sensitive, like ground terrain radar for example. When I first opened up a ground terrain radar, I couldn't believe all the gold connectors. I was shocked. But I was even more surprised by the amount of silver wire they contained. So I wouldn't just write off the ribbon cables, they very well might be silver.
Scott
I had a long cable from a 1982 Texas Instruments peripheral box that had tiny silver wires, but about decided they were aluminum, along with discovering a number of IDE ribbon cables were silver-ish also, about decided the silver ones were tin plated copper, or aluminum
You could do that but all you accomplish is taking a calculatable amount of recoverable gold and mix it to almost impossible-to-recover-the-gold lump. All to get a few extra dollars from someone who doesn't know that they will end up spending 3x what the gold is worth in chemical and time. Anyone that would do this doesn't know what they are doing in the first place and will probably screw things up, creating a toxic waste mess in his yard. (Hope he's not your neighbor!)Quote:
Originally Posted by Scrap Master J
Sell it as it is; fair representation for a fair dollar.
This is another old post that I find really useful and interesting. I wouldn't mind pulling pins while watching TV or hanging out with the family.